George Santayana had an irrational faith in reason ... I have irrational faith in television.

Friday, November 16, 2012

Fringe 5.7: Father and Son

Two men, father and son, each more intelligent and focused than they've been in the past, each moving Fringe 5.7 forward tonight. One is fearing what he is becoming, and wants it undone. The other is reveling in it, and will take it to the max, in the name of revolution, success, and revenge.

I actually like Walter the way he is now - more like Walternate, as I mentioned last week, or more like William Bell, as Walter puts it, and whose influence was very much in play tonight. Walter is afraid he'll lose the kindness, the humanity, that winning quality that he had in such profusion along with his cracked craziness in seasons past. I actually don't miss that too much, maybe not even at all. I like seeing Walter operate at his full intelligence.

Olivia knows there's something very different about Peter. We know its the effect of putting in the tech, and Olivia knows too by the end of the episode, because Peter tells her. His mental capacity has made him into another Hari Seldon (see Isaac Asimov's Foundation series; I also said Nate Silver was a Hari Seldon in real life, after he predicted the results of the 2012 Presidential election so perfectly). But back to Fringe - Peter can follow the precise movements of everyone around him, including Observers, which means he can predict the future pretty well. Add to that the acute Observer hearing, and an ability to work out complex mathematical relationships instantly, and you have a pretty impressive revolutionary in Peter. We already saw, last week, how the tech has increased his physical strength and his control of his body.

Olivia's worried. She doesn't want to lose Peter again. And he's already lost a tuft of hair. Is he on his way to becoming a Bald Observer? Is that Peter in the future in the picture top left of this blog post? But there's no way our people will be able to prevail over the Observers without Peter's powers. Peter already has had some impressive initial success - tonight some more classic Fringe science - and there's clearly more to come.

If our side wins, will Peter surrender the tech, take it out of his head? Hard to see this happening. Will Walter really have those pieces of his brain removed again? I don't want to see this happening.

About Me

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor of Communication &
Media Studies at Fordham University in New York City.His 8 nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge (1997),
Digital McLuhan (1999), Realspace (2003), Cellphone (2004), and New New Media (2009, 2nd edition 2012), have been the
subject of major articles in the New York Times, Wired, the Christian Science
Monitor, and have been translated into 12 languages. His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (1999, ebook 2012), Borrowed Tides (2001), TheConsciousness Plague (2002, 2013), The Pixel Eye (2003), The Plot To SaveSocrates (2006, ebook 2012), and Unburning Alexandria (2013).His short stories
have been nominated for Nebula, Hugo, Edgar, and Sturgeon Awards.Paul Levinson appears on "The
O'Reilly Factor" (Fox News), "The CBS Evening News,"“NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” (PBS),“Nightline” (ABC), NPR, and numerous
national and international TV and radio programs. His 1972 album, Twice Upon a Rhyme, was re-issued in 2009 (CD) and 2010 (remastered vinyl). He reviews the best of
television in his InfiniteRegress.tv blog, and was listed in The Chronicle of
Higher Education’s “Top 10 Academic Twitterers” in 2009.

e-mail received from a reader:Dear Paul, I just dreamed of airships flying between raindrops. I just returned from 2042 CE, where I sold my hardcover copy of The Plot to Save Socrates for seventy million Neo-Euros, because it had your response to this e-mail from way back in 2007 scotch-taped onto the inside of the cover. A Paul Levinson collector paid top Neo-Euro, because of the authentic archaic e-mail printout from you. It turns out that not many of your e-mails from before your tenure as CEO of HBO/Cinemax and terms as United Nations Secretary General will survive that far into the future. So, please respond to this e-mail, to help found my great-grandchildren's fortune. My Will will stipulate that they must share with your great grandchidren. Thanks! Tom